Tag Archives: American Dream

Gorman Dares Us to Dream Together

By Robin Bates | Published: August 26, 2024

Amanda Gorman’s Democratic National Convention poem celebrated an all-inclusive vision of America.

By Robin Bates | Published: April 25, 2024

Donald Trump as Willy Loman? Well, both are dreamers. Only one of them, however, is cruel.

By Robin Bates | Published: April 1, 2024

The Key Bridge disaster–and doubts about America’s response–brings to mind Hart Crane’s bridge poem, a hymn to America aspiring to greatness.

By Robin Bates | Published: December 14, 2020

Robinson Jeffers offers a poem that reminds us of spiritual resources available to us in these dark days.

By Robin Bates | Published: January 13, 2020

The movie “Knives Out” is satisfying but leaves unquestioned the American Dream.

By Robin Bates | Published: November 4, 2019

The disillusion of Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown may prove to be America’s in a post-Trump world.

By Robin Bates | Published: April 3, 2018

To understand why the race card is so politically effective, reading Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

By Robin Bates | Published: December 28, 2017

New York columnist Roger Cohen suggests two poems for resisting Trumpism: “if” and “Harlem.”

By Robin Bates | Published: August 17, 2017

If Trump is like Napoleon in Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” can he be defeated by popular resistance, as he is in Tolstoy’s novel?